| Kevin BowyerOrganist
"Kevin Bowyer, like the landscape gardener, Capablility Brown, has an analytical mind which can assess a score's potential. He also has a warm heart, which seeks every opportunity of humanising music which might seem unduly cerebral."
Classic CD
"Rarely does one find such a perfect match of player, music and instrument as this turns out to be. Alain's post-Romantic expressionism seems to find a ready soul-mate in Kevin Bowyer."
Organists' Review
"I am astonished by your brilliant performances."
Fernando Germani
"Bowyer is at complete ease with the complexities of the music, and the resulting performances can only be described as perfect."
The Organ.
"...a superb player, not only technically brilliant, but profoundly musical..."
Gramophone.
"...one of the most exciting organists now active... one of the few musicians at work today who might be compared to John Ogdon."
Fanfare.
“...this extraordinary concert was a spectacular tour de force of virtuoso and characterful organ playing by Kevin Bowyer, whose pyrotechnical feats of digital magic could be observed, but not explained, in detail via the fixed camera in the organ loft that projected the eye-boggling versatility of his wrists, flying fingers, hands, dancing feet and lead weights on to a large screen...”
Glasgow Herald
“...one of the world’s hardiest and most formidable virtuosos… probably... Britain’s most formidable organist.”
MusicWeb International
“unique”
Gramophone
“...amazing intensity of interpretative vision and wonderful use of organ colour...”
Gramophone
- 1961: January 9 - born in Southend-on-Sea, Essex.
- 1967: decides to become astronaut or, failing that, bus driver. Has clearly failed with this aspiration.
- 1972: October 18 - joins choir of St. Luke's Church, Prittlewell - nice voice.
- 1973: takes lessons in piano accordion.
- 1975: organ lessons begin with Eric Welch.
- 1975: first serious girlfriend (sigh).
- 1977: Grade 8 Distinction (yes!!).
- 1979-82: studies at Royal Academy of Music with Douglas Hawkridge, Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, Virginia Black, Paul Steinitz and Arthur Wills.
- 1982-84: organ studies with David Sanger.
- 1983: 1st Prize St. Albans International Organ Festival.
- 1987: July 25, plays first performance of Sorabji's 2 hour Organ Symphony 1 (1923/4) in London. This is really where his reputation as a player of "impossible" music stems from.
- 1988-2001: recording contract with Nimbus Records - about 50 CDs including complete J S Bach.
- 1990: lots of other 1st prizes - Odense, Dublin, Paisley, Calgary.
- 1999-2008: Senior Lecturer in Organ at the RNCM.
- 2005-present: organist to the University of Glasgow.
Concerts, broadcasts, lectures, teaching and masterclasses throughout Europe and in North America, Australia and Japan.
Other premieres (World, European or UK) include:
Kaikhosru Sorabji (First Organ Symphony and the first movement of the Second Organ Symphony), Alistair Hinton (Pansophiж for John Ogdon), Brian Ferneyhough (Sieben Sterne), Giles Swayne (Organ Concerto: Chinese Whispers) Michael Finnissy (Second Organ Symphony), Anthony Gilbert (Halifenu Vine Dance), Iain Matheson (Wondrous Machine, Through Thick and Thin, A Beginning, a Middle and an End and Background Music), Anthony Payne (Reflections in the Sea of Glass), Charles Wuorinen (Natural Fantasy), Milton Babbitt (Manifold Music), Chris Dench (compostela/finisterre) and Iannis Xenakis (Gmeeoorh).
Kevin has also delved into light music and film music and his concert programmes entitled Organ Party! have proved immensely popular. His two Regis CDs entitled Organ X-Plosion, as well as Storm, released on the Regent label and A Late 20th Century Edwardian Bach Recital on Priory, have international followings of almost cult status. His article, Twentieth Century European Organ Music - A Toast, cast as a play set in a Cotswolds pub, in the Incorporated Association of Organists' Millennium Book was described by one reviewer as "quite simply the best piece of writing on organ music that I have ever seen."
He has been Organist to the University of Glasgow since September 2005. He accompanies the very excellent Chapel Choir and is Artistic Director of the annual International Organ Festival held in the Memorial Chapel. The Sorabji Organ Works Project, a five year plan supported by The Glasgow University Trust, aims to have a complete critical edition of all three of the Sorabji organ symphonies in print by June 2013 as well as live performances of all three works. CD recordings of the complete Sorabji organ works will be released on Altarus Records, who will also produce a DVD documenting the entire project. Sorabji's massive and largely unplayed Second Organ Symphony (1929-32, about 6Ѕ hours) is scheduled for performance in June 2009. The Third Organ Symphony (1949-54, also about 6Ѕ hours, also unplayed), reputedly the most complex and technically demanding organ work ever composed, is currently undergoing conversion from the manuscript into a workable performing score and is scheduled to be surfacing in public performance in early summer 2013.
Kevin teaches in Glasgow for the St. Giles International Organ School.
His other interests include reading widely, obscure cinema, real ale, malt whiskies and looking at the sea. His favourite pastime is sleeping.
Kevin Bowyer website www.kevinbowyer.net | |
